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Ray LaMontagne – Hannah Lyrics 13 years ago
My intentions they were pure
Oh the breeze did whip and I lost my grip
And I tumbled towards the earth
Where you never would guess who it was that stood below
And His name I would never tell
But His eyes were clear
And His arms were strong
And He caught me as I fell


Given the rest of the song, my interpretation is:

He [singer] began to get his affairs in order -- most likely but not necessarily "laying down" the bottle -- so as to gain Hannah's approval. This seems congruent with his intentions being "pure". During the process, he slipped -- i.e., messed up -- and backtracked on whatever progress he had made. Hence falling back toward the earth. Being caught seems to be a fairly blunt spiritual reference. (In my reading, it doesn't make sense for the singer to be "caught" by alcohol given the contrast between his "purity" in climbing the tree and the iniquity in falling. It would seem logical for the "catcher" here to be affectively positive.)

That said, this falls apart if you treat the wind that "did whip" as the flights of happenstance. In which case, his pure attempt to catch Hannah failed, pushing him back into the arms of alcohol. Not a bad interpretation there either.

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